School’s out and the nights roll in; Man, just like a long lost friend; You ain’t seen in a while; And can’t help but smile. – Kenny Chesney

Clayton Randolph ’16 – The Chesney lyrics from Summertime may describe what most college students feel when classes finally end. But at Wabash, a few students remain on campus, some with professors gaining valuable job experience in fields such as Economics, Small Business, College office internships, and conducting research.

To outsiders, it may seem obvious that translates to students and more downtime for everyone.

Associate Professor of History Dr. Richard Warner, who has been at Wabash for 15 years, agreed the summer is a different animal. “The summer is much quieter,” Warner laughed. “One of the favorable differences is that we have very few meetings.”

Since most Wabash professors are actively engaged with students, including clubs and activities, it leaves little time for research. First year Assistant Professor of Political Science Michael Burch has already traveled to Ghana for field research. “As soon as classes ended and grades were in, I went off to Ghana for a few weeks,” he said. “My plans for the summer are to take all of that research and create a couple of articles.”

Warner will be completing a filmography article that outlines what movies will work well in a classroom. “It is a list of films that can be used in History classes, 150 different films.”

Fabian House ‘16 and Tim Livolsi ’16 said the summer is more tranquil.

House, interning in the Admissions and Financial Aid Offices, said the campus is more relaxed. “Weekends can even be quieter because a lot of people leave.”

Livolsi, interning in the Information Technology department, agreed with the laid back description. “I do not have anything to worry about in the evening, compared to during the school year when I have no time at all.”

The two agreed the living arrangements make for an interesting summer and can cause issues. “Independents and fraternity men definitely become closer in College Hall, and there is the kitchen dilemma where a group of guys have to use one kitchen,” Livolsi said. “It is a bit more frustrating because we have to provide food for ourselves and the kitchen is always a mess.”

A summer at Wabash provides the opportunity to meet new people, relax, and worry about when you can start grilling on the George Foreman. For professors, it is a time to catch up on research and attend fewer meetings.

Students and professors seem to agree the change of pace is a nice step away from the rigorous academic environment. Nearly 100 students are taking advantage this summer to work and learn in a less chaotic atmosphere.

Clayton Randolph ’16 is a summer intern in the Communications and Marketing office. He is a History major and Economics minor. Clayton is the lead play-by-play radio broadcaster for Wabash College baseball and also broadcasts Wabash College football. He does sideline reporting for Wabash TV during home football games. Clayton co-hosts The Montgomery County Gridiron Report radio show every Friday night on Thunder 103.9 in Crawfordsville. He also calls county high school basketball games on Crawfordsville’s Thunder 103.9 and True Country 106.3.

For this edition of The Pulse, a group of alumni were contacted to talk about commencement and the memories elicited.

Below are three of the best responses with each mentioning touchstones like how quickly time passes, the sense of accomplishment, and being rung out. Not surprisingly, each Wabash Man also recalled that the weather figured prominently in those remembrances.

Art Howe ‘82
“I remember the smell of the freshly mown grass, how good the Mall looked, how colorful were many of the capes and cowls our professors wore in the processional, how warm it was to be wearing black robes in 80-degree heat, and how important it was to have my family present for such a big day. But what first comes to my mind is being rung out.”

“Wabash has many traditions but being rung in as a class and being rung out as a class with the bell that Prof. Caleb Mills used to ring in the first classes of Wabash men is perhaps my favorite tradition.”

We celebrate the accomplishments of the Class of 2014 this weekend.

Jim Dyer ‘83
“The first thing that comes to mind is the phrase in our Alma Mater, “these fleeting years we tarried here.” I have attended four commencements at Wabash – mine, my two brothers’ (one older and one younger), and my son’s. At each ceremony I always thought about how fast the four years went by – fleeting years, indeed. The other thing that comes to mind is rain. All three of my brothers’ commencement ceremonies were held in Chadwick Court due to rain. My son’s commencement last spring was the first outdoor commencement I have attended, and it was wonderful.”

“There is so much that goes on that weekend that things tend to be a blur. The only thing that stands out for me was singing Old Wabash for the last time at my son’s commencement, and, to quote the song, “tears will rise.” Both my wife and I were in tears as we realized that another milestone in our lives had just occurred.”

David Wagner ‘05
“I remember just hanging out with my family afterwards and thinking it’s over, but there is still a lot to come. I was happy with my accomplishment, but I wanted to do more. Celebrating the time with those who mean the most to me and relishing the moment was special.”

“I remember walking across the stage. It was here on the Mall, so it was a bright, sunny day. Walking across and having the diploma in my hand. I was excited, but sad that I was going to depart everything that happened here in those four years. So many friendships, so many bonds were molded here. It was bittersweet.”

Congratulations to the Class of 2014!

Forever more as in days of yore Their deeds be noble and grand. Then once again ye Wabash men, Three cheers for Alma Mater.

Even after leaving four years ago for Dallas, Emmanuel Aouad ’10, still has a Wabash schedule.

The business process engineer at State Farm with the Six Sigma Green Belt applies engineering principles to people and assigned tasks, better known as econometrics. He does time studies, observations, process mapping, and times the steps to be certain that tasks are completed as smoothly as possible.

Additionally, the former indoor and outdoor track and field All-American is also a nationally certified track coach in the greater Dallas Area. For the last two seasons, Aouad has been the hurdles coach for the Irving, Texas, Elite Summer Track team.

Emmanuel Aouad ’10 is a man of many talents.

When all is said and done, Aouad, 26, is an efficiency coach. Whether it be process engineering or track and field, the simple goal is to finish fast.

Mix in a growing career as a nerdcore rapper with the stage name 1-Up, and most all of his time is, indeed, occupied. Nerdcore rap features topics like video gaming, Sci-Fi, bad pick-up lines and even subjects like economics and physics. He self-produces his tracks and shoots and edits his own videos. What goes out is all Aouad.

It’s a nice fusion for the Wally who minored in music and played in the Wabash jazz band. Things are going so well that Aouad has released a few CDs and routinely plays three or four live gigs per month.

When they ask me how I’m doing man I tell them that I’m doing “fine” and I always use an adverb there you know… unless it has to rhyme Some of these lines will leave your head acrobatic I’ll calculate the time it takes to fall… Kinematics

“This is exactly me, hip-hop and jazz with a nerdy twist,” Aouad said. “I’ll do video game raps or jazz covers of songs. Whatever comes to mind.

“It’s too thoughtful or too intelligent,” he continued. “This is a very obscure genre. I have a little bit of a following, and I never expected that.”

I caught up with Aouad in Dallas on a Sunday morning in early April hours after a Saturday night performance. He took the stage in front of about 35 people the previous night, but the numbers don’t matter. He was there to have a good time and connect with the audience.

“If you get up on stage because you love it and have a good time every show, then you are successful. I try to make it enjoyable for everyone. I love it when I see people laughing or picking up my really obscure references.”

Aouad’s music provides an outlet from the simple stresses of the work day, but also a doorway for an alter ego to emerge.

“It’s my escape from stress at work, and I want it to remain fun,” said Aouad. “Music lets me come out of that corporate shell. Sometimes you have to keep it professional, but music lets the other Emmanuel out.”

Aouad is a modern day Clark Kent right down to the attire. His co-workers might mention a 1-Up video they discovered on the internet, while fellow musicians wonder why he doesn’t do music full time, and his tracksters often wonder about his “church clothes” when he shows up for practice still wearing a suit and tie.

“I now realize that high schoolers have no concept of age,” Aouad laughed loudly and shook his head. “They all think I’m 35. I have to remind them that these are my work clothes.”

This Wabash Man is comfortable no matter what uniform he happens to be wearing.

Professor of English and Commissioner of the Wabash NBA (Noontime Basketball Association) Tobey Herzog H’11

Steve Charles—Center 216 got noisy last Thursday.

Professor of English Tobey Herzog H’11, his red #41 Chicago Bulls jersey pulled over his signature blue Oxford cloth shirt, was showing video clips from the championship game of the second Chicago Bulls Fantasy Camp he attended back in the 1980s—the one where he won the MVP award—and as they watched that old footage, 30-plus students were cheering him on.

They laughed at a tongue-in-cheek interview with Bulls radio announcer Johnny “Red” Kerr (not to mention the ’80s short-shorts uniforms and some of Herzog’s middle-aged, hirsute teammates). They applauded as he was introduced for the game, and groaned when he missed his first shot. A few minutes in Tobey said, “Okay, that’s enough,” and stepped to the computer to turn off the video. But the students protested.

“You’ve gotta score,” several called out.

Seconds later they got their wish when Tobey was fouled and hit his first free throw. The gleeful cheers from students were so loud Professor Warren Rosenberg heard them halfway down the hallway. He’d later ask his long-time English Department colleague what the hell was going on down there.

Tobey was just telling stories—personal stories. This one was about his love of basketball: The first shots he took as a kid after his neighbor put up a goal; the exhilaration he felt every day he’d go there and shoot baskets by himself; the joy of playing on his junior high and early high school teams; the trauma of not getting playing time when a new coach took over; the redemption he felt years later when he was named MVP at the Bulls Fantasy Camp; and why more than a half century after he took those first shots, he still plays the game in Wabash’s NBA—the Noontime Basketball League.

All this to set up a conversation about two works of literature—John Updike’s poem, “Ex-Basketball Player,” and Pat Conroy’s memoir, My Losing Season, a book that includes the line, “I have loved nothing on this earth as I did the game of basketball.”

They are literary works that explore, among other things, relationships between fathers and sons, coaches and players, athletes and the games they play and the dangers of living for the glory days of the past.

And you couldn’t have imagined a more moving, hilarious, and enjoyable catalyst for thoughtful conversation about those works than Herzog’s personal stories. His love of basketball connects and resonates with the 18-22 years olds fresh from their own glory days of the sports they love and encourages empathy from the less athletic. Here’s a guy who, in his 60s, can still drain a 15-foot jumper over younger, taller players; who has cheered on the generations of Little Giants from the bleachers of Chadwick Court and Hollett Little Giant Stadium to the sidelines of Knowling Fieldhouse. And that same teacher also loves the works of Dickens and Hardy, Fitzgerald and Miller, Kosinski and Keats, Hemingway and O’Brien, among others. The ultimate scholar-athlete.

The revelation that his stories could be an entre for his students to the very literature that has enriched his own life is a recent one for Tobey. Students in his Modern War Literature class complained that Herzog—a Vietnam veteran and a leading scholar of Vietnam War literature and biographer of veteran and author Tim O’Brien—wasn’t bringing enough of his own war experience into the classroom. Could his own personal stories have helped students better understand and have empathy for the authors and characters in those works?

So in this final year of teaching before his retirement, Tobey took perhaps the greatest risk of his teaching career. He created a one-time class, The History of Herzog, in which he would guide students to the literature that has enriched, shaped, and informed his life. And he would introduce those works he loves with personal stories of when and why those authors and their works came to mean so much to him.

Teaching for Herzog has always been about the material, not the teacher. Putting the spotlight on himself is so contrary to his nature; maybe that’s why this class is working so well. “It could still go off a cliff,” he says. But if it does, it will do so in glorious flames.

I’ll save the details for the article I’m writing about the class for Wabash Magazine, but suffice it to say that by taking this risk and making himself vulnerable, he’s creating a safe space for students to do the same, and perhaps they’ll receive a similar gift this literature has given their teacher.

“They may not remember me,” Tobey told me after class, “but they may remember some of these stories; they will remember some of the literature, and that may be important for them, may help them some day.”

In the same room a few days later, Tobey gave his final public academic lecture before his retirement (he will give the last Chapel Talk this semester in May). The room was packed; several of us sat on the floor. This time faculty colleagues from across the College along with staff and students were the audience, and the focus was his work as a scholar of Vietnam War literature.

Taking cue from his success in The History of Herzog class, he opened with stories. Personal stories. About his father and his father’s war stories, his mother’s war stories from the home front, his own stories from Vietnam, and the story of what led him to focus his scholarly research and writing on Vietnam War literature.

“I have always been fascinated with war stories and the tellers of those tales,” Tobey said. Those stories will be the final works he’ll be introducing to his students in The History of Herzog class in the coming weeks, and I plan to attend those sessions to finish my article.

For now the image that stays with me from The History of Herzog is from last Thursday: Tobey leans over the podium, reading glasses in hand, and listens to a student’s reflections about the John Updike poem. Hands go up across the room as the professor encourages the student to extend his point, then calls on another who makes a connection with the Pat Conroy memoir. Tobey responds with surprise—“whoah!”—then smiles and nods like a point guard who just dished out an assist to a teammate for a slam dunk.

Carl, in her first year at Wabash, was presented April 22 with the Distinguished Service Award. The award is presented to formally recognize those who have made exemplary contributions to the financial aid profession and to the association..

Carl came to Wabash hoping to increase the profile and strengthen communication with students at Wabash. She has also been an instrumental voice in the re-shaping of the ESH, or student employment, program.

The award honors leadership activities and achievements within the financial aid profession or higher education community.

Dan Couch ’89, playing guitar during an interview for Wabash Magazine in Nashville.

Steve Charles—Last Friday Dan Couch ’89 was showing me around Nashville’s Music Row in the black pickup he bought with some of the money he’d earned from “Somethin’ ‘bout a Truck,” the first of two #1 Country hits he wrote with singer/songwriter Kip Moore. We’d just pulled out of the parking lot of BMI (Broadcast Music, Inc.) at the intersection of Music Circle North and Music Circle East and were merging with traffic around the Buddy Killen Roundabout.

“Not exactly what you expected to see on Music Row?” Dan asked good-naturedly as we circled Musica, a sculpture of nude dancers that is the roundabout’s centerpiece.

Two hours earlier in a posh reception room BMI provided (thanks to Dan) for our interview for the next issue of Wabash Magazine, the former Wabash psych major and catcher for the Little Giants told me part of what has become one of the favorite “good guy finishes first” stories in Music City: How Dan left his lucrative job as a medical supplies salesman in Seattle in the early 1990s and moved to Nashville (via a long stay back in his hometown of Logansport, IN) to chase his dream of becoming “the next Garth Brooks,” an aspiration that changed to a focus on songwriting and has taken more than 10 years of hard work and faith to achieve.

Dan talked about his wife, Tina Marie, the sacrifices she made, how she continued to believe in him, even during a crucial moment when he doubted himself. And he spoke of friends who kept believing, too—guys like Wabash classmate Bill McManus, who he still talks with every morning (and called during our interview!).

But driving down Music Row, our conversation turned to potato chips.

More precisely, to his old job supplying a potato chip route in the Nashville area (at various times to make ends meet he also worked construction and tended bar, while Tina Marie works as a nurse.) He’d met a fellow aspiring writer on that chip route. Dan would finish around noon, clear the chips out of the car, pick up his friend, and drive to a songwriter’s circle to play his songs and listen to others’.

“I was overwhelmed by this place when I first came here,” Dan admitted. Driving up and down Music Row, it’s easy to see why: Nashville may be the most competitive music market in the world right now, with the largest concentration of songwriters in the country. The Tin Pan Alley of our day. Don’t let the modest two story homes converted to office space and the relative scarcity of multi-story corporate buildings on Music Row fool you; behind those quaint doors are some of the biggest labels and names in music, not to mention all the people who support this industry. Jobs (song pitchers and pluggers?) I’d never heard of.

Statistically speaking, the former Little Giant baseball player would have had a better shot at making the major leagues than being paid full-time as a songwriter in Nashville.

He knows that. But there’s gratitude, not boasting, in his voice. He’s thankful to do what he loves for a living (he’s old school, too—eschewing computers for the feel of pencil and paper, and his song notebooks read like a journal of each year’s work.)

He’s grateful for those who helped him learn his craft and those who write alongside him now. He counts the trust he and Moore have in each other as a great gift that gives both the freedom to be their most creative.

Most of all, there’s Tina Marie.

You’ll meet her some day,” Dan promised during our interview as he fretted to find the words to do her justice.

Not unlike the way he struggled a couple of years ago on the sixth-floor terrace of the BMI building, when he and Moore were being celebrated for hitting #1 with “Somethin’ ‘Bout a Truck.”

CMT News saw it this way: Couch was so overwhelmed at having finally achieved success as a songwriter, he could hardly get through his comments to the crowd.

“My wife and I always believed I could get here,” he said looking out toward his family standing near the front of the stage. “She gave me three wonderful kids. Life is good.”

The lyrics to his second #1 hit with Moore, “Hey Pretty Girl,” get to the heart of it. Lines like:

Life’s a lonely, winding rideBetter have the right one by your side.

“I like to say that song is about who I found, and the kind of person Kip hopes to find someday,” Dan said.

There’s a 19th century poem titled “Ode” inscribed in large letters in the BMI lobby. I photographed Dan in front of it because I read the opening lines—“We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams.” When I was reviewing those photos after I left Nashville, I realized that in several, Dan is walking toward these words:

“One man with a dream, shall go forth and conquer.”

“Dirt Road,” another song that Dan wrote with Moore (and Westin Davis), debuted Monday as a single from Moore’s upcoming second album with MCA. The song has been a fan favorite at Moore’s live shows, the young singer/songwriter was a nominee this year for the Academy of Country Music’s New Artist of the Year, and he’ll be playing that song a lot when he tours in May with Tim McGraw.

None of this guarantees that “Dirt Road” will hit #1 or even climb the charts. But, as we like to say, Wabash always fights.

Nashville was my second stop photographing and interviewing Wabash alumni for the upcoming music issue of Wabash Magazine. A week earlier we were backstage with Ben Kitterman ’06, the classically trained musician and steel guitar/dobro player turned tour bus driver turned musical sideman turn bandleader for Aaron Lewis. (Watch Ben’s arrangement for Lewis and the band of Sheryl Crowe’s “Strong Enough.”

Saturday we spent a late night photographing luthier and violinist Dan Gillespie ’08 at the Galway Arms in Chicago, where he was playing fiddle with his band Can I Get an Amen as part of a raucous folk collective called Old Lazarus’ Harp (Listen to their amazing music at: https://soundcloud.com/can-i-get-an-amen

On my way there stopped by campus to cover chemistry/music major Taylor Neal ’14 at his remarkable composition recital, and topped it all off with Beethoven at Sunday’s Chamber Orchestra Concert.